Word: tannings
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...next week, long lines of Vietnamese, and some Americans, snaked through a former gym at Tan Son Nhut, waiting to be cleared to board the American C-130s and C-141s that were leaving constantly during daylight hours. Stamping of their papers continued all night. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, under pressure from the State Department, had agreed to let the Vietnamese enter--mostly through Guam and the Philippines--if they could find an American to vouch for them. To help Vietnamese women get out, Smith adds, "we just married them right in the lines, sometimes," to American...
...April 26 NVA forces had surrounded Saigon. That night ex-President Thieu was persuaded to leave while he still could; Ambassador Martin organized a group of cars to spirit him out of the city to Tan Son Nhut. Snepp, who went along on the ride, half expected Thieu and his American escorts to be hauled out of their cars and shot at some checkpoint by ARVN soldiers incensed at being abandoned. Nothing happened, but the little caravan took the precaution of racing onto the air base with lights out and braking to a skidding stop alongside a runway. Thieu...
...some changed sides and "wanted to show their new devotion to us. So many pilots and tank drivers from the other side helped out in the last days." In the case of the air raid, says Phuong, "the idea was to bomb the concrete hangars and the runways at Tan Son Nhut. We didn't think we'd do much real damage, but we wanted to have maximum psychological effect. We wanted to create chaos...
...from where? The air raid on Tan Son Nhut was soon followed by a rocket and artillery bombardment. The rockets killed two Marines: Lance Corporal Darwin Judge of Marshalltown, Iowa, and Corporal Charles McMahon Jr. of Woburn, Massachusetts. Two Marine helicopter pilots also died on April 29 when their chopper crashed into the sea near an aircraft carrier taking part in the evacuation: Captain William Craig Nystul of Coronado, California, and First Lieutenant Michael John Shea of El Paso, Texas. They were the last four Americans killed in action in Vietnam...
...time the NVA infantry moved in, Tan Son Nhut could be used only by helicopters. Bao Ninh, a corporal with a reconnaissance team of the North Vietnamese Third Army, recalls lying on the roof of a three-story concrete building at the edge of a runway on the morning of April 29 and studying the vast air base through binoculars, "trying to find troop placements. And you could see it was just chaos. People running back and forth. Some people--mostly women and children, no men--just waiting, with bags and suitcases. I guess they were hoping...